


The Monster in the Dark

by as_with_a_sunbeam



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: 1800, Aftermath, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Levi Weeks Trial, New York, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:51:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/as_with_a_sunbeam/pseuds/as_with_a_sunbeam
Summary: Hamilton comes home after two long days defending Levi Weeks for the murder of young Elma Sands. The trial may be over, but the horror remains, haunting his dreams and leaving him to wake up in a cold sweat. Eliza tries to provide him some comfort.[Please do heed the rating and the warning: includes discussions of both Elma Sands' murder and Richard Croucher's later crime against his stepdaughter, Margaret Miller]





	The Monster in the Dark

A single lantern swung slowly on the one horse sleigh, casting strange shadows across the snowy meadow in the oppressive quiet of the icy, starless winter night. The flickering light illuminated the slight, delicate figure of a pale young woman standing atop a wooden plank beside a narrow, deep abyss. Her cheeks shimmered with tears. She clutched a muff against herself as she shook, alone in the cold.

“Please, have mercy,” the woman rasped.

“Hush,” the wind whispered.

Shadowed fingers reached out from the well and crept along the woman’s dress like vines until she became part of the darkness. Heavy silence lingered in her wake. The lonely lantern swayed in the wind, pushing back against the looming dark.

For the briefest moment, a face appeared in the shadows, lit from below and wearing a terrible, haunting grin.  

**

Hamilton’s eyes shot open in his dark bedroom. He was panting and tangled in the blankets, with sweat dotting his brow and dread heavy in his gut. Over the sound of his ragged breath, he heard a light spring rain pattering against the window. He swallowed and tried to calm himself.

The same dream had plagued him for weeks now, but the face in the darkness was new. When he first met Richard Croucher for a deposition two months ago, he’d immediately felt a distinctive prickle on the back of his neck, his gut instincts screaming that the man before him was untrustworthy and dangerous. And then at the trial, mere hours ago now, he’d held a candle under Croucher’s face while he’d examined another witness, and the same gut feeling had surged inside him again. Croucher hadn’t grinned in the dim light, but the image of his sharp cheeks and dark eyes in the candlelight had made an indelible impression.

He shuddered at the memory and ran his hand over his face.  

Rolling his head to the side, he saw Eliza asleep beside him, just visible in the sliver of light sneaking through the curtains from the streetlamp below their window. One of her hands rested on her pillow by her face, and the other lay across her middle, rising and falling slowly with her breath. He’d pulled the blankets almost completely off of her in his disturbed sleep.

He sat up and slowly untangled the blankets around him to tuck them back over his sleeping wife. She shifted and gave a little sigh as he pulled the warm covers up over her shoulder. When her breathing evened once more, he gently caressed her dark curls, taking comfort in her nearness. 

Elma Sands’ tear-streaked face haunted him no less that the villainous Croucher. He hadn’t seen the poor girl’s body when she was finally pulled from the Manhattan Well, but he’d spoken with enough witnesses to conjure the distressing scene: the delicate frame of a young woman plagued with health issues, her dark hair sopping and matted, her fair skin marred with ugly bruises, her pretty calico gown torn and ruined. She’d been so young, only a few years older than his sweet little Angelica.

A chill ran down his spine. He struck a match to light the candle on the nightstand and rose from the bed, careful not to disturb Eliza. Shrugging his banyan over his nightshirt, he eased open his bedroom door and tiptoed quietly down the hall towards Angelica’s room. 

He guarded the reddish-gold candle flame with his palm as he peeked into the room to see his little angel curled under her white embroidered bedlinen, just as she should be. Her mouth was open, and a soft little whistle was audible when she exhaled. He smiled softly despite the anxious knot in the pit of his stomach. 

Croucher still walked freely through the city, stalking the night, with no one the wiser.

“Sweetheart?” He started at the soft call coming from the direction of his bedroom. Eliza stood in the open doorway, yawning as she rubbed a hand over her bleary eyes.

“Did I wake you?” he whispered.

She nodded and padded over to him.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t acknowledge the apology. Her arms slid around his waist in an embrace and she rested her head against his shoulder. He held the candle away from her as he returned the hug with his free arm. The glow of the soft golden light enveloped them.  

“What’s the matter?” she asked, one hand gliding tenderly down along his spine.

“I had a nightmare,” he admitted with a self-conscious smile.

She hummed sympathetically and pressed a sleepy kiss to his shoulder. “Everything’s all right,” she assured him. “Come back to sleep.”

The chilling scene by the well still hung in his mind’s eye. As exhausted and drained as he was, he needed something to drive the darkness from his mind before he attempted sleep again. “You go ahead. I think I’ll go downstairs, maybe read for a little while.”  

She looked up at him with assessing eyes. “Are you upset about the trial?”

“Yes,” he confessed.

“You said you won, didn’t you?”

“We did,” he confirmed. Considering he’d arrived home at two in the morning yesterday, and closer to four today, he was surprised she retained anything of the short conversation they’d exchanged before he crawled into bed beside her and drifted off.

 “Do you think Mr. Weeks was guilty?” she asked softly. Her hand stroked down his back again. She’d avoided asking any such questions in the run up to the trial, despite the murder being the talk of the town. He appreciated that her voice held no judgment; she seemed merely to be pressing for the source of his distress.

Honestly, he couldn’t say for certain that Weeks was innocent of the crime. Levi didn’t exactly have a strong alibi for the night of the murder, and the prosecution hadn’t put on evidence for a day and half for nothing. But still, it wasn’t Levi who plagued his dreams.

“I don’t think he should have been convicted,” he settled on as the most honest answer. “The prosecution failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and not for lack of trying. That’s not what’s bothering me.”

She kissed his cheek. “Then what’s wrong?”

“I think I might know who killed her,” he whispered. “I certainly can’t prove it. I just…I have this terrible feeling. The more I’ve come to learn, the more it seems to fit.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“Richard Croucher. One of the other boarders from Mrs. Ring’s.” 

“Did you tell Mr. Colden?”

Cadwallader Colden was the assistant Attorney General tasked with prosecuting the case against Levi Weeks. The younger man was an able attorney, and he’d certainly done his utmost to make the pieces of the case fit together to form the wrong picture. Hamilton couldn’t begrudge him that; with the fervor surrounding this case, stoked by the press, Colden’s failure to prosecute would have led to a riot.

“He heard all the same evidence I did,” Hamilton replied with a slight shrug. “There’s not much. Certainly not close to the amount Colden mounted against Weeks. I don’t think it likely Colden will attempt another prosecution on the strength of mere suspicion and conjecture, especially after tonight.”

Eliza sighed and hugged him tighter. “God will see to it,” she assured him.

He nodded, though he didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as she sounded. Nudging her cheek with his nose, he added, “Just stay far away from him. You and Angelica.”

She didn’t comment how unlikely it was that either she or their daughter would ever cross paths with the wretched man. Instead, she simply promised, “We will.”

He looked over to Angelica again, still sleeping peacefully. She was safe, and so was Eliza. Some of the tension left his shoulders.

Eliza’s fingers loosely tangled in his as she tugged him back towards the bedroom. He followed obediently. After the two day trial, he was desperate for sleep even with the threat of nightmares still looming. When he blew out the light and laid back against the pillows, Eliza scooted over to curl up beside him. Her palm rested against his belly, and she began to rub soothing little circles over his stomach where the knot of fear and anxiety was tightest.

The whoosh of a carriage wheel driving through a rain puddle carried up from outside as he slowly relaxed. The rain continued its steady patter when the sound of the carriage faded into the night. He shifted his face towards Eliza as he surrendered to sleep, her gentle touch keeping the shadows at bay for the moment.

**

Eliza opened the window to let in the fresh air that June morning. The children had all run outside as soon as they finished eating breakfast, delighting in the sunshine and the warm weather. Hamilton could hear them laughing in their little yard from his chair in the parlor, where he sat sipping at his coffee and perusing the morning paper, catching up on the local news he’d missed while he’d been off touring New England with the army. Eliza dropped a kiss to his head as she passed by, picking up the clutter of toys from the floor. He grinned at her and flipped the paper over.

The headline caught his eye first. “A Monster,” the thick, black text declared. The name beneath made his stomach sink. Richard Croucher had struck again, it seemed; only this time, his victim had lived to tell the tale.

“ _He used force. He did what he would, and hurt me very much, so that I could hardly get home the next morning. After he had done, he fell asleep, and I got up and sat on some wood till I could see to find the door_ ,” Margaret Miller, the wretch’s thirteen year old stepdaughter, had testified between sobs.*

Colden had prosecuted the case, and summarized in his argument how Croucher had boasted to the girl of knowing the details of Elma Sands’ murder. “ _Shall I tell you how the young woman died?_ ” he’d asked Margaret. Then he’d taken her into his room, forced her to the bed, and whispered ‘ _If you scream_ , _I will kill you_.’” *

“Oh my God,” he muttered, hand over his mouth and a sick feeling in his stomach.

 “What’s wrong?” Eliza asked distractedly, still piling William’s blocks.

He beckoned her over and pointed to the article.

“Oh,” she exhaled, her hand to her mouth as she read, the same queasy expression stealing over her features.

Her gaze shifted from the paper to him when she finished. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“I should have done something,” he whispered. “I should have pressed Colden to follow up on our information. This is my fault.”

That poor little girl, he thought. The monster from his nightmares had been all too real for her. After what Croucher had done to Elma, no one else should have had to suffer at his hands.

“No, honey. This was Croucher’s fault. No one else’s,” she told him softly. “You said yourself, Colden never would have prosecuted on the existing evidence. You helped show Mr. Weeks was innocent. You did all you could have done.”

She pressed a kiss to his lips and looked him in the eye, as though determined to see that her words had sunk in. He forced a wan smile for her benefit, though he still felt cold and sick inside. He squeezed Eliza’s hand for comfort.

He thought of Elma standing at that well, crying and terrified. Had Croucher assaulted her as well? Raped her? Had he pushed her in to that dark abyss, or had she jumped, preferring death to her fate in Croucher’s hands?

Justice had been done at the Weeks trial, and again at Croucher’s, despite a hardy defense  of the demon by Brockholst Livingston. But that did nothing to restore Elma Sands to life, or to ease the lifelong horror little Margaret Miller would now suffer. Even justice felt hollow in the wake of such horrors.

The article concluded, “ _Every one must rejoice that the community is freed from a demon so artful and unfeeling_.” * Yet his evil still lingered, in Elma’s absence and in Margaret’s terror. Could the world ever truly be freed from such men?

**Author's Note:**

> *Italics and quotes are from newspaper and trial records, and descriptions from Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery, Crown Publishers, New York, 2013. 
> 
> I just finished re-reading Paul Collins’ book, and I couldn’t shake how truly disturbing the Elma Sands murder was. I’m sure it must have been difficult for Hamilton to work on, especially as he had a daughter who was close in age to the victim. Angelica was about sixteen at this time, and Elma Sands was in her early twenties. The fact that Hamilton and the defense team correctly suspected Croucher, and yet he was never arrested in connection with the murder, must have also been difficult. 
> 
> Croucher was found not guilty by reason of insanity for an attempted homicide back in London, but fled before he could be taken to an asylum. He came to New York and stayed at the Ring’s boarding house, where he met Elma Sands. He likely invited her to a party at a distillery that night in December, and when he had her alone, murdered her and threw her body into the Manhattan Well. When her body was discovered, he immediately accused Levi Weeks, and whipped up public sentiment against him. It should be noted, however, that Croucher was never convicted of that crime, and Elma Sands’ murder remains technically unsolved. 
> 
> Croucher married a young widow around the time of the Weeks trial. Three weeks after the trial, he took his thirteen year old stepdaughter to help him clean out his boarding room, where he raped her and threatened to kill her. Margaret Miller bravely testified against him, and survived a truly vile cross examination by Brockholst Livingston. The jury found Croucher guilty in less than five minutes, and he was sentenced to life of hard labor. 
> 
> I’d highly recommend the book as worth a read if you’re interested in learning more about Elma Sands and the Levi Weeks trial. The first half of the book introduces you to Elma, her family, Levi Weeks, and Richard Croucher, and the second half takes you through the two day trial, covering all the testimony, the cross examinations, and, of course, the famous moment where Hamilton dramatically held the candle under Croucher’s face and asked, "Was this the man?". 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.


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